Rep. B.J. Nikkel, R-Loveland, and Rep. Daniel Kagan, D-Cherry Hills Village, listen to testimony during last year's civil unions bill. She was a "no" then but hasn't said how she will vote this year.

Two years ago, Rep. B.J. Nikkel raised eyebrows when she showed up at a gay-rights luncheon. After all, she had worked for former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” Nikkel said, at the time. “They’re all Coloradans, and I think it’s important to understand their issues.”

Musgrave, who served the 4th Congressional District until being defeated in 2008, was perhaps best known as a co-sponsor of a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Nikkel was Musgrave’s district director from 2003 to 2006.

Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her national political director, Guy Short, on a plane to somewhere.

Guy Short apparently has a thing for tough, driven, controversial and conservative women.

The Erie resident served as U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave’s chief of staff until she lost her re-election bid in 2008. Now Short is serving as national director for Michele Bachmann’s presidential bid.

Short served as the Minnesota Republican’s general consultant on her last congressional campaign, helping her raise a record $13 million, and has been on her presidential campaign from the start, first as a senior adviser.

“I also started and direct her leaderhip pac — Michele’s PAC Michelepac (Many Individual Conservatives Helping Elect Leaders Everywhere),” he said. “I still live in Colorado but I’ve been traveling nationally for Michele Bachmann and, as you can imagine, spending most of my time in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.”

Or Gardner playing hooky from the state legislature to go to Washington?

Gardner is trying to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey in the 4th Congressional District, and the four Republicans who held the seat before her have sent a fund-raising letter on Gardner’s behalf.

“When we see the Gardner for Colorado campaign, it’s like something out of a Normal Rockwell painting,” they wrote in their two-page appeal.

The letter was signed by:

* Hank Brown, a former U.S. senator and CU president and one of the most respected men in Colorado politics. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 and left in 1991.

Two conservative commentators last night ripped Republican Mike Castle for failing to contact the Tea-Party backed candidate who beat him in Delaware’s U.S. Senate primary.

Their discussion conjured up memories of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District contest in 2008.

Democratic Betsy Markey, celebrating her victory in 2008, never got a phone call from the Republican she ousted, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. (Photo by Dana Romanoff)

“When you lose an election you call and concede to the victor,” Mike Huckabee told Sean Hannity. “To not do that, to me, it’s a classless thing.”

Christine O’Donnell beat Castle, who later distributed a newspaper article from the Delaware News Journal that said voters had elected someone “who has no chance of winning the general election, is a verifiable liar and cheater with no known means of employment other than her campaign money and has nothing to claim as a campaign platform other than whatever the tea party stands for.”

And no wonder, because it strikes me that Ken Buck must frighten Democrats and Michael Bennet a great deal.

Because Buck seems to perfectly represent the Republican Party at this juncture in history.

But does Bennet represent his party?

Buck’s gaffes will hurt him. Some of Buck’s personal beliefs will hurt him. If he doesn’t get out in front of the labeling game, they could hurt him a lot. But his central interest – what truly animates him – isn’t the social-issue stuff that drove old-school conservatives in Colorado like Marilyn Musgrave.

What seems to excite Buck is talking about deficit spending and rethinking federal government. He understands that the anger within the Tea Party isn’t coming from Dan-Maes-like conspiracy theories. Rather, there is genuine concern that government spending has lost its connection to minding the store and that government debt is endangering the nation’s security.

Holbert, the former president of the Colorado Mortgage Lenders Association, faces Parker mayor and school teacher David Casiano and Polly Lawrence, a principle in Lawrence Construction Co. in the three-way GOP primary to replace May, the House minority leader, who is term limited.

Cory Gardner knocked his opponents off the ballot last week, earning him a promotion to “Young Gun” status by the group helping Republicans get elected to Congress.

Gardner will be in Washington this week for Young Gun Day.

Gardner, a state representative from Yuma, is the 24th Republican to attain Young Gun status within the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Supporter Sean Conway, a Weld County commissioner, says Gardner won’t meet the same fate that befell U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave in 2008 when some 16,000 Republicans didn’t mark their ballots in that race.

Marilyn Musgrave missed her own tribute today at the GOPfest in Loveland because she fell while cleaning a ceiling fan at home and had to go to the hospital.

The former congresswoman from the 4th District is being X-rayed for for a possible broken wrist and broken ribs, said Bob Schaffer, another former congressman from the 4th District.

A film honoring Musgrave was shown at the 4th CD assembly, where three Republicans are vying to get on the ballot. The winner of the August primary will take on U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, D-Fort Collins, who beat Musgrave in 2008.

Schaffer praised Musgrave, a former school board member and state lawmaker who was first elected to Congress in 2002.

Want proof that the times they are a changin’? A lawmaker who once worked for former Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave attended a gay-rights luncheon today.

Rep. B.J. Nikkel, of Loveland, was among the nine or so Republican lawmakers at the One Colorado event. She was Musgrave’s district director from 2003 to 2006.

Also present was GOP Sen. Shawn Mitchell of Broomfield, whose 2003 bill limiting schools’ abilities to teach about all forms of human sexuality triggered Tim Gill, a gay multi-millionaire, to open his wallet to help Democrats win control of the legislature in 2004.

Rep. Mark Ferrandino, a Democrat and an openly gay lawmaker, was stunned when he looked around the room and saw the number of Republican lawmakers. Several have long backed gay issues, but he was surprised to see others.

Two members of the recently-reconfigured Douglas County school board visited with the Post editorial board to talk about their priorities for the state’s third largest school district.

The first thing we wanted to know was whether there was any truth to the rumor we’d heard about the district considering former congressman Tom Tancredo to fill the superintendent’s position.

No, quipped Doug Benevento, we’re thinking Marilyn Musgrave.

You may recall the school board races in Dougco got more attention than usual during this last election with some saying that the Republican party had turned the school board elections into partisan races by endorsing a slate of four candidates.

The Republicans endorsed John Carson, Dan Gerken, Benevento and Meghann Silverthorn, who all won their respective elections.

Among their tasks, the school board is looking to fill the superintendent’s job. Jim Christensen, the head of the Douglas County School District, announced in August (well before the November elections) that he was resigning to take a job working with at-risk students.

Dougco is early in its search to fill the job, which likely will pay in the $250,000-a-year range.

“What we’ve said is that we’d like to see a wide variety of candidates,” Benevento said. That range will include non-traditional candidates, meaning those who don’t come from a education background. Michael Bennet, who was DPS superintendent, and John Berry, who heads Aurora Public Schools, are two examples of non-traditional superintendents.

After Benevento’s joke about hiring Musgrave, a former congresswoman, Dan Gerkin said in all seriousness that this was the first he’d heard about Tancredo as a superintendent candidate.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.